Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Nickel and dimed

Recently I've been nominated for a couple of law school dean positions. I've even toyed with the idea of formally applying. Although unlike Mitt Romney and Donald Trump I can't claim to enjoy firing people per se, I do think I'd positively relish the opportunity to give the ziggy to the significant percentage of employees at the typical law school who deserve to have their sinecures terminated with extreme prejudice.

Unfortunately there are many key aspects to the job -- staying alert during long administrative meetings, sucking up constantly to rich people, uttering pious nonsense on appropriate public occasions -- that I would be terrible at. But if (or rather when) some intrepid chancellor decides he or she needs a ruthless hatchet man, who will know how to cut a payroll drastically with little or no loss of educational quality . . .

All Emory Law Students are required to register for the
Kessler-Edison Program for Trial Techniques during their second year of
study. Those students in their third year of study who did not register
or complete the program during their second year because
of a joint-degree waiver during their second year, or due to conflicts
or other reasons that prevented them from completing the program during
their second year, must also register and complete the program as a
prerequiste to graduation.

In order to complete your registeration for the program, all students
will be required to pay a course materials fee on-line via a credit
card. The fee of $135 covers the cost of hard copy and electronic case
files and other reading materials, as well as
a ditigal video card, which will be distributed to students on
the January 7, 2013, at the beginning of the spring semester, and during
the week long May session of the program that commences on May 4, 2013,
and concludes on May 10, 2013. In addition, the
program provides lunch for students on the weekend and trial dates of
the program (four days), as well as two receptions with faculty.

To register and pay for your course materials fee, go to the following link:

Students must visit register and pay their course materials fee by December 1, 2012.

With Regards,

Hon. Lindsay R.M. Jones,
Associate Director
Center for Advocacy and Dispure Resolution
Emory University School of Law

This missive was sent to me by an understandably exasperated Emory student, who wonders what exactly the $45,000 per year in tuition he and his fellow students are charged is going towards. Now on one level what's another $135 when you're being billed $135,000 in tuition alone for an opportunity to go try to find a job in Nebraska? But on quite another, we're talking about a grand total of $37,000 or thereabouts, which the school is passing through to its 2Ls, rather than digging around in the couch cushions of the school's $50 million per year operating budget.

Leaving aside matters of ethics, law school administrators need to understand that the symbolic optics of this sort of thing are terrible. It's not 2007 any more -- the natives are getting restless, and you should really avoid annoying them unnecessarily. If you have to, tell your faculty that they'll be taking a couple of fewer trips to Lake Como -- oh the joys of "international law!" -- and cut back on the free booze at the AALS reception, or whatever.

My school charges $70 graduation fee. I went to the office to tell that I want a refund since I will not be attending my graduation. I was politely told that I need to stop nickeling and diming the school.

The fat fin aid woman looked at me like I was some welfare queen trying to free ride.

Also, this year I put down exact amount for student loans to just cover tuition (usually i just rounded up to 40K and got a small refund). When I tried to change my schedule after august 1, I found out i had a hold a hold to my account because I did not pay the tuition.

Turns out there is a 4% origination fee. And because I put down exact amount the origination cut into my tuition. I guess the graduation fee did not help either.

So I had to call fin aid office to take out more loans on my name because I could not use a single service from the university. The hold works quick, could not even swipe my ID to go to the gym.

Assholes want money and they want it in full and up-front. And they will not tolerate $400, shortfall for a single moment.

If you were to apply to and accept such a position, the hiring school would then claim to be "on the cutting edge." The school would tell its donors, alumni and students "Look! Our dean has discussed the legal job market in depth. We care about YOU! Apply today!"

You have good sir. In fact a while back you forwarded me some materials which I used to stir up some discontent among the student population. Students were pissed but as we know there is no recourse for a pissed student.

Love your blog Prof. Campos, but I just can't work up any outrage today. Your argument is that it's wrong for law schools to a) have required courses and/or b) charge for materials for those courses? Every educational program I'm aware of both has some mandatory classes *and* expects students to pay for books and other materials (photocopies, lab materials, etc.).

I think the argument isn't that this is an "outrage," but rather that it's not a good idea to create a new course requirement and then stick students with a fee that would be trivial for the school to pick up, but which will be a burden to the individual credit cards of many already broke students.

IOW, don't be so cheap when you're already dealing with an increasingly pissed off student body.

The real outrage here is that a part-time municipal judge is sending an e-mail to students -- in his teaching rather than judicial capacity -- and signing it "Hon. Lindsay R.M. Jones"

What a prick! You can send judicial correspondence signed "Hon." or appear that way on an official biography, but come on. If you're a teacher, just sign it Professor Jones or Dean Jones or even Judge Jones. What a prick!

Jones also is a municipal court Judge for the City of Decatur and an associate magistrate judge for DeKalb County.

It is pretty difficult to be "responsive" to the brain dead or the intellectually self-castrated.

To be brief - after charging an *enormous* fortune for a service of increasingly dubious worth - by means of deceptive tactics - schools have the *bottomless* gall to charge incremental fees for any and every additional mandatory "service" they can dream up.

In legal terms...this is known as being a sh*tbag - modus operandi for the Law School Scam.

It is possible to make it any clearer?

I have also auto-debited your checking account (thanks for the IP address) for the incremental education that I have just provided you.

Unlike Romney & Trump, Campos has never had a real job where he was judged on his performance. He would never be considered by any school above TTTT as a dean, much less a "professor." Tenure is a nice thing to hide behind.

Pay your fees and shut up. You are the one who made the stupid decision to pay 150K for a useless JD.

I would imagine that many Emory law students don't have 135$ of spare change under the sofa cushions, so they have to borrow it or charge it on a credit card. Depending on interest rate, and how long it takes to pay off that amount, they could spend several times the original 135. Kinda like the "$50 pizza" that college students are warned not to charge on their credit cards.

Then again, if IBR is the financial plan for law school, what's a few more bucks?

Sounds like $135 would pay for the materials for the entire class. Perhaps the lady who suggested In a commencement speech that graduates might find opportunity in Nebraska could part with a few dollars. Help the Emory grads save for the bus fare.

...giving even more out even more freely so his rich friends in the for-profit education industry can continue their criminal transfer of wealth up to the 1%.

Obama might not give much of a fuck. But he gives more of a fuck than Romney, who could barely mask his disdain towards the middle and working classes.

That's why he lost. Get over it. The economy was Bush's fault, and it takes more than four years to dig out from under that shitpile. Or was the hole not deep enough for you? You wanted Romney to hand you a fucking shovel?

The choice was between the President who is owned by the bankers or the Governor who is one of the bankers - in other words - no choice at all. Romney had the appearance, as one wag suggested, as "the guy who laid off your father". Every time someone asked Romney a question you could see his beady eyes shift while is brain, like a 70s computer, struggled to retrieve the programmed answer. Then there was the matter of his wife's HORSE being in the Olympic dressage competition. A real man of the people.

Don't kid yourself that Obama nee Santa Claus was any less of the POS 1% elites destroying the country. On the upside for struggling law students, maybe Santa Claus will forgive all student loan debt while allowing his favorite little elves in the legal faculty to keep their ill gotten gains.

Some of this stuff is not so nickle and dime. My alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, charges "tuition" of $49,900 (they learned pricing policy from Woolworths). If you want to attend, however, you must also pay a "general fee" of $2408 and a "technology fee" of $830 making the actual amount you must pay to The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania $53,138. Quoting just the "tuition" figure understates the cost by 6.5%. Is this common elsewhere?

BTW back in the mid-'70's it charged me $3800 my second year and $4200 my third -- the equivalent of about $16,000 - 17,000 in 2012 dollars. The increase, which sounds very steep, really wasn't; the inflation rate was over 9% in 1975.

CA has the best University system, public and private, than any other state in the nation. As well, pretty much every invention or technological advancement in the last 60 years has either come entirely from CA, or at least had significant development in CA, including auto, aerospace, space technology, internet, social media, etc.

So while there are high taxes, there are also high income earners and plenty of educated people that don't mind paying the high taxes.

There are also mountains and beaches that can be visited both, in the same day. It is a very beautiful state, from an amenity and topography standpoint.

I'm not the original poster. Never been to California and don't care if I ever do. You can keep your earthquakes, mudslides, pacific Tsunamis, Smog, brush fires, traffic, immigration problems, bankrupted government, sleazy politicians, vapid and vacuous populus, and let's not forget public schools that charge outrageous tuition prices. If you're from California - stay there!

Live in Los Angeles. Love the mountains and oceans. But the taxes are outrageous. I'm an entertainment attorney and on a daily basis I'm talking to industry people trying to find a way to not have t pay taxes in CA because they are so high. And we try to avoid filming in LA as much as possible for the same reason.

In his acceptance speech last night, President Obama stated that it doesn't matter what race or religion you are. All you have to do is work hard to make it in America. Does that mean that law students and recent law grads are not working hard enough?

Will Santa Claus loan me $500 million so I can start my own green solar panel company? I'd also like it to be located in the least business friendly environment in America - California - because I love surfing and mountain biking.

Heck, you might get $500 million for starting an online social network linking green solar panel companies, all of which happen to be located on the same street in San Francisco. With Facebook employees cashing out, there are tens of billions floating around out there.

Today I sent out an email to students. Felt good about the days work; don't think the little bastards will cause a dispure. Little bastards. Can't help but think I will somehow get the President re-elected tonight.

By the way, a little unrelated, but NYU dean claiming students are "doing terrifically" in the job market. He also states their employment figures are due to "hard core" public interest folks. He even boasts that NYU has 2-4 times as many public interest lawyers than their competitors. This is all well and good, except the school charges more than $50K in tuition, and these debts will only be repaid for 10 years. http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecareerist/2012/11/qa-nyu-dean.html

Do consider those positions, Prof. Campos. You have the chance to lead a much-needed reform, at least if you get into a good school (top 25 or so). Too far down the list, the answer will simply be to shut the toilet down, which will also mean putting yourself out of work.

Ah yes - it was stuff like this back in the early 90s that at Georgetown caused graduating classes to wear NOPE (Not A Penny Ever) pins on their robes and acute embarrassment for the unfortunate form each section designated to try to shake his classmates down for more money - at that time GULC was the most expensive law school in the country by all accounts.

Incidentally someone needs to tell RM Jones that you do not actually use Hon in your own correspondence. It is an honorific - it is a bit like signing your own letters

Agree with @8:36 and @9:13, not about the Trump and Romney thing, but about the fact that Campos has never been truly judged on his job performance. What has he done constructively to contribute to the betterment of law, lawyers and law student? Part of being a Dean is being a leader and visionary, not a complainer. Anyone can do that.

I venture to guess Campos does not even read these replies but only posts -- a narcisisstic exercise much like all law professor lectures. If he replies, then I am proven wrong.

If folks voluntarily applied, accepted, and graduated from law school and then suddenly realized life was not as rosey as they wanted, then, welcome to the real world. Seems like a bunch of whiners who feel self-entitled. Law professors and law schools suck in general...how you did not know that before attending is amazing. Attending law school simply gives you credentials and then you have to find your own way in the world.

"Seems like a bunch of whiners who feel self-entitled. Law professors and law schools suck in general...how you did not know that before attending is amazing."

You studiously ignore the the element of fraud and calculated deception the schools have engaged in for decades.

Until the coming of blogs (circa 2006 or so) or, less so, until the rise of the internet (circa 1996), the law schools used their "monopoly of the megaphone" (their ill-won wealth and their undeserved reputation for integrity) to widely publicize utterly misleading placement/employment statistics.

That is how we end up with a "profession" where 16% of the law grads from the last 40 years (approx. 250k out of 1.5 million) have vanished from the state Bars.

Most people have understood the ridiculous cost and crapiness of the system for many decades. They just entered it with their eyes wide open, did not blame others for their choices, and then lived their lives in the most productive way they could.

You can change the system meaningfully or you can sit on the computer and spew resentment. Is putting law schools out of business good? Maybe, as long as you are not a family affected by it and as long as you do not truly believe in your mission or calling as a teacher. Are less applications good? Maybe, as long as you don't mind the quality of practicing lawyers correspondingly go down, too. Or maybe they all suck anyway. Who knows.

The criticisms of law schools are not markedly diffrent from the cricisms of higher edication in general. It is not revolutionary.

Some poeple go to law school so they actually can be practicing lawyers. Lawprof practiced from 1989-90 so apparently he could not swing it. Many of his students thought his classes were horrid and ineffetive. Now he bites the hand that feeds him.Why doesn't he quit and stop draining the CU budget? Practice what you preach. Lead by example. Perhaps be a professional blogger and make money from pop up ads. I would not want a Dean who was not passionate about his mission as an educator and leader.

I guess I'll stop commenting on this massive scam. I would hate for the law prof above, and his/her family, to be negatively affected by the closure of law schools that are destroying thousands of lives at the taxpayers' expense.

12:47, you can't be serious with this "everybody has always known it's a scam" defense. There's no "maybe" about any of it at this point -- putting law schools out of business is a clear net good for the entirety of American society not employed at the law schools in question. If you could make an argument to the contrary you would make it, instead of whatever the hell it is that you're doing here. Drunk posting, judging by your spelling acumen.

This makes no sense. Don't you understand that a legal education costs double what these law schools are charging? They are only able to keep tuition at current levels through generous support of alumni and their endowment. Its a fundamental rule of higher education. The cost is always double tuition.

What, now I have an obligation to employ people? Business has been slow. I've been hanging on, hoping for a turn-around. It 's not coming. My reaction is the same as that of the market today. Deal with it.

"What, now I have an obligation to employ people? Business has been slow. "

Well, you didn't build it anyway.

"Other people did".

(I am 12:26/All fired up - reason I asked about the Obama bumper snickers is Boortz lead out this a.m. with a story about a Naples area business dude who figured he couldn't stay in business as-was if ObamaCare remains in force, so he fired the 5 employees with Obama bumper stickers to get his business under the "magic 50" employee number.)

Hehe-yah, I disn't build it, but I sure as hell am tearing it down-burn, baby, burn!I don't really care anymore. I've got enough to go live in Medellin and pull some dime pieces. Screw trying to run a business here when you are only vilified for it.

Law schools have not fully exploited the potential of nickel and dime assessments. Why not lower "tuition," while quietly making it up in mandatory "general student fees," "registration fees," "course material fees," ect.?

"You studiously ignore the the element of fraud and calculated deception the schools have engaged in for decades."

Oh how I wish, several decades ago, that the scamblogs were technologically viable, and then I would have been warned, instead of being suckered as a perfect lemming with only a destroyed financial life to show for my having been born in the USA, as per the wealthy USA pop shit sham commercial capitalistic musicians might say and grow unfairly wealthy from.

"Double jeopardy is a procedural defence that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same (or similar) charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction. In common law countries, a defendant may enter a peremptory plea of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict (autrefois means "previously" in French), meaning the defendant has been acquitted or convicted of the same offence.[1]

If this issue is raised, evidence will be placed before the court, which will normally rule as a preliminary matter whether the plea is substantiated, and if it so finds, the projected trial will be prevented from proceeding. In some countries, the guarantee against being "twice put in jeopardy" is a constitutional right; these include Canada, Mexico and the United States. In other countries, the protection is afforded by statute law."

In my humble opinion and hunch Lance was finallky done in by the black widow spider, Sheryl Crow, who should not go unpunished or not be forced to give up all of her wordly assets as long as Lance is subjected to 10X double jeopardy.

Maybe LawProf/Deej should go to a twice-weekly post format so as to be able to focus on more Scamitologically(TM) weighty issues.

$135 to pay for course materials for a particular course? Heck, the cheapest class I had (Kinko's copies of a copyright-infringement sense impaired Law Professor's bad wet dream of "the best" of property lawbooks from which he could steal) had course materials exceeding $135.

Double Jeopardy does not apply when there is a double sovereignty. If you have been acquitted in a state court that does not prevent the federal government(or vice versa)from pursuing prosecution for the same crime.

What's the deal with him anyway? It's not like he is at one of the TTT schools this blog mostly targets, he's at Chicago. His continual hate most have a more personal backstory that I don't know about.

Leiter's the ultimate example of somebody who doesn't know jack about being a lawyer, and who got a job at a law school because he couldn't get a job in a philosophy department. So he's pretty insecure.

I think he got really upset about the first few posts that suggested professors barely work at all (as compared to say, professors working hard as some apparently do even if that hard work produces no value).

10:39 - I'm not sure if that is correct. If you are acquitted in state court on a homocide or assault rap, the Feds can still charge you with criminal civil rights violations. That's what happened in the Rodney King beating case and a bunch of other cases too. But I don't think the Feds could charge with with assault or murder. The underlying criminal conduct is the same, but the crimes are different.

This blog makes a big deal about a couple of vague emails and a few handwritten notes from a disgraced and disgruntled secretary at TJSL as being a “smoking gun” in the Alaburda case, but then when TJSL fires back with a solid, well-crafted, and strong memo with some damning revelations about the plaintiff, no coverage whatsoever?

For anyone who isn’t interested in sweeping every scrap of unfavorable evidence under the rug, the memo can be found here:

http://www.abajournal.com/files/Alaburda_MJS.pdf

Let me summarize one part of it for you:

1. Alaburda submitted between two and four applications for summer employment during 2L. Yes, you read that right. Between two and four. Not twenty and forty. Not two hundred and four hundred. Two and four.

2. But in 3L, she left no employment stone unturned, submitting a massive total of just one job application. Yes, you read that right too. One. Not one hundred. One.

3. And even more amazingly, after graduation and passing the bar exam, and despite her absolute reluctance to even bother searching for a job, she was offered a $60,000 full time lawyer position, plus benefits, but rescinded her acceptance because the firm did not offer to pay her bar dues and she would have had to undergo one month of training.

This deserves – at the very least! – coverage on this blog. One suspects, however, that it will be ignored.

This is really important news. Unemployed law grads aren't getting jobs as lawyers only because they're not trying! There are plenty of high-paying jobs with good benefits for grads of even the worst law schools, but they don't want to work.

As expected, the first response follows the typical format for anything "unscammy" on this blog:

1 - Ridicule.2 - Extend point made to a ridiculous extreme and pretend that this false point is the original point.3 - Highlight how ridiculous the false point is by drawing a deliberatly ridiculous conclusion.4 - Congratulate self on how cleverly these unfavorable facts were covered up.

The number of apps refers to her submissions through OCI, and I would imagine this "full-time lawyer position" is an "e-discovery associate" job for one of the document review mills in the area. (For everybody playing at home, that's full-time, JD-required employment in NALP's mind.)

I'm sure Campos will give it full coverage once this case settles out of court for an undisclosed amount, despite all these rock-solid defenses employed by the defendant's counsel.

Hmmm, not sure where you're getting that info from, MCfJ. It's not in the document, and the document itself specifies that Alaburda's testimony has been sealed, so it's not public either.

We can "imagine" as much as we like. But it appears, if you actually read the doc, that this was a real life lawyer job. It also appears that she was not interested in looking for legal jobs during law school, and actually wanted to be a teacher!

When her overall case is based on the idea that her degree had "no value", all of this information is absolutely vital. Her degree did have value, especially when her job before law school was a "production assistant" in film (i.e. unpaid dead end job), and she had little hope of ever rising above that with her film degree.

I'm seeing a very disturbing shift in the nature of the scam, according to commenters on this blog (which is the only place the scam seems to exist). It's gone from "there are no jobs!" to "there are no enjoyable jobs!"

Who gives a F what she was being paid $60,000 plus full benefits for. Her law degree got her a job, just not "Ally McBeal" or "Suits" job she really wanted.

I'm sure Campos will give this full coverage too, when Alaburda loses!

It's just a shame that he doesn't give it fair coverage.

If the scam exists, it exists whether favorable or unfavorable facts come to light. It starts to fall to pieces when it is built on a foundation of not covering developments that don't fit into the scheme.

Reread the memorandum accompanying the defendant's MSJ. It's obvious that he refers to OCI regarding his apps during 2L and 3L.

If we are not to "give a F" what its graduates are doing, then the school should change its name to the Thomas Jefferson Fast Track Pipeline to Document Review. Truth in advertising.

I'm sorry that you don't feel that Campos has been fair to your poor disadvantaged law schools, yearning to breathe free and increase tuition by several multiples of inflation every year, but the rest of us are surprisingly okay with it. If you want a more flattering view of law schools, well...read ABAJournal.com. Or NLJ. Or pretty much everyone else's blog on legal education.

Either she falsified data or she didn't. I don't see how the diligence with which she searched for legal work is relevant. Is it supposed to impeach her credibility somehow? It makes me suspect that she was not particularly diligent in searching for legal jobs, and maybe it even suggests she's not terribly wise, or feels unrealistically entitled, but that doesn't bear on her credibility in any way, to my mind.Whether or not she had trouble finding a job has literally zero bearing on whether or not she was pressured by the administration to falsify evidence regarding employment outcomes for others.

This blog only exists for a bunch of losers, led by a "professor" who can't teach. If you went to any school (law or otherwise) and took out massive loans with the expectation of making 150K+ you are (were) a fool. No degree, JD included, is a ticket to a high dollar job. You have to earn that. Quit crying and get out there and find a job so you can pay back your loans.

I'm inclined to agree. I went to law school before most people here and I knew that it was a risk. How? Can I point to any "stats"? No. I can point to my common sense, my talks with attorneys, my talks with attorneys who told me that it was a profession in decline, my basic due diligence.

I am tired of all these claims of scams and stuff like that. Law schools deliver on their raison d'etre - awarding JD degrees in return for three years of work. That is the overriding deal, and every law school delivers on it. Fussing about the stats for employment being "false" is bullshit. We know they are false, but they are not entirely false.

If you went to law school for a law degree, YOU WERE NOT SCAMMED. You got a law degree!

If you went to law school for the promise of a job paying $160K per year, then you were a fool.

And I know it's hard to deal with. I know that after being told all your lives that you are smart and special that ending up being a fool is a long way to fall. And it hurts. But that's life.

Life is not fair. Life, at every turn, is a scam. Some of us will die at age 50 after living healthy lifestyles, and some will die at age 80 after living like pigs. Why not start a "Inside the Heart Scam" when you are diagnosed with early onset heart failure? Or if you go into a restaurant and the 8oz steak you ordered is only 7.8oz, why not start a "Inside the Steakhouse Scam" blog?

There comes a point when you grow up, you realize that life has some shitty times, and that we can either sit here and complain, or we can move forward.

Which is what I intend to do.

I have come to realize that wasting my time here is exactly that - a waste of time. The discourse is flawed and silly, the straws being grasped at are ever thinner, and nothing that this blog does will ever affect me. Unless it will get my student loans discharged (which is a fucking ridiculous hope), none of this matters. Closing law schools doesn't matter. Firing professors doesn't matter. None of it affects me at all.

It only affects those who are bitter and looking for revenge. Because restitution won't come from here.

What bothers me perhaps at an even deeper level is the waste of talent that this blog encourages. The comments section is full of complainers saying there are no opportunities. Imagine if those same complainers, instead of spending their time here, spent their time actually using their law degrees? Volunteer. Start a non-profit. Do something else with your free time and your law degree that doesn't degrade it, but builds upon it.

No, it won't make money for you. But neither does the time spent here whining in anonymous comments on the internet. What a waste of your time and education.

But that's the key. People here seem lazy. They wanted a top paying job handed to them with only three years of easy work. They want results with no effort. They are destined to be disappointed with life no matter what.

And perhaps most telling of the silliness behind this scam, well beyond its insane leaders, well beyond its logical flaws, well beyond everything, is the fact that out of all these claimed tens of thousands of scammed grads each year - which must make up an army of millions right now - the comments this blog receives are less than 100 on most posts, at least 25% of which are me, and I suspect that the actual number of commenters could be counted on two hands, one finger of which would be allocated to Campos, who almost certainly contributes to his own comments.

Out of these millions of debt-laden, scammed, depressed, and angry failed JDs, you can only rustle up ten or so who actually believe that they were scammed?

That alone should tell you that this is an extreme fringe belief.

I'm done here. I'll come back once in a while to read - blogs like this are addicting - but not to contribute. I have better things to do with my time.

You should too, or you end up becoming a bitter, depressed, failure of a human being.

Apparently this blog also exists for a bunch of loser law professor trolls, led by an obsessive "philosopher" who can't argue for shit. If you made the mistake of becoming a law professor with the expectation that you could make 150K+/year forever to do nothing, while lives were destroyed and taxpayers ripped off so that you could do so, you are (were) a fool. Quit crying because you've realized that you will be remembered as a hack, not an academic, and go find a real job.

9:01 smacks of desperation, perhaps realizing that Campos is having an effect and that 9:01s days as a law professor are coming to an end. Apparently he thinks it's quite OK to financially destroy the new law graduates and then dump what remains of their unpaid loans on the taxpayer.

As for no school offering a job at $160,000 a year, medical school comes close, especially in useful specialities like surgery.

A kid in college or a nontraditional student looking to go to law school knows only what he/she knows about the practice of law from parents, peers, teachers, maybe TV, and then his own research through talking to people in the profession and now the interweb.. this blog just gets out one aspect of the truth about the costs/benefit of law school. (The other truth about law being that working as a lawyer is much more boring and stressful than can be imagined before trying it and that lots of the working lawyers you'll be spending time with are REALLY UNHAPPY and you may become that way as well.) It's simple. We demand accuracy from all kinds of other institutions - the issue as I see it is just that the law schools need to present accurate data. And lawyers need to talk about these issues (the cost vs. benefit of law school plus the job dissatisfaction issue) honestly and openly. There is a growing-up process in all areas of life.. but don't we all want to help others out? Isn't that also a big part of being a lawyer - the whole ethical, truth thing? Anyway, great blog, thanks Prof. Campos.